als we have been getting lately. Hope yuh make out all
right."

"I will do very nicely, I thank you," smiled the new cook in the light
of the lantern which stood upon the fireless cook-stove. "I wish you
good-night, gentlemen, and sweet dreams of loved ones."

"Say, he's a polite son-of-a-gun," Pink commented when they were
riding back to town. "'The U fich flies'--that's a good one! What is
he, do you thing? French?"

"He's liable to be most anything, and I'll gamble he can build a good
dinner for a hungry man. That's the main point," said Weary.

At daybreak Weary woke and heard him humming a little tune while he
moved softly about the cook-tent and the mess-wagon, evidently
searching mostly for the things which were not there, to judge from
stray remarks which interrupted the love song. "Rolled oat--I do not
find him," he heard once. And again: "Where the clean towels they are,
that I do not discover." Weary smiled sleepily and took another nap.

The cook's manner of announcing breakfast was such that it awoke even
Jack Bates, notoriously a sleepy-head, and Cal Emmett who was almost
as bad. Instead of pounding upon a pan and lustily roaring
"_Grub-pi-i-ile!_" in the time-honored manner of roundup cooks, he
came softly up to the bed-tent, lifted a flap deprecatingly and
announced in a velvet voice:

"Breakfast is served, gentlemen."

Andy Green, whose experiences had been varied, sat up and blinked at
the gently swaying flap where the cook had been standing. "Say, what
we got in camp?" he asked curiously. "A butler?"

"By golly, that's the way a cook _oughta_ be!" vowed Slim, and reached
for his hat.

They dressed hastily and trooped down to the creek for their morning
ablutions, and hurried back to the breakfast which waited. The new
cook was smiling and apologetic and anxious to please. The Happy
Family felt almost as if there were a woman in camp and became very
polite without in the least realizing that they were not behaving in
the usual manner, or dreaming that they were unconsciously trying to
live up to their chef.

"The breakfast, it is of a lacking in many things fich I shall
endeavor to remedy," he assured them, pouring coffee as if he were
serving royalty. He was dressed immaculately in white cap and apron,
and his mustache was waxed to a degree which made it resemble a cat's
whiskers. The Happy Family tasted the coffee and glanced eloquently at
one another. It was better than Patsy's coffee,